


The Girl That Played In Mud

by vands88



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Background Kieren/Rick, Character Study, Childhood, F/F, Family Feels, Gary is a Dick, POV Female Character, The Rising (In the Flesh), an awful lot of swearing, general fucked-up-ness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 08:41:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6976000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vands88/pseuds/vands88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jem was a total badass during the Rising. She didn’t cry over Kieren like a sissy, definitely didn’t have nightmares about rotters, and she definitely, DEFINITELY, didn’t fall in love with Lisa Lancaster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Girl That Played In Mud

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to say a big thank you to [lavellington](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavellington/) for crying about Jem Walker with me what must’ve been 18 months ago now and encouraging me to write tragic Rising!fic, and to [lindsaylaurie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lindsaylaurie/) for painstaking beta'ing this a thousand times since because I couldn’t leave it well enough alone.
> 
> There's a few OCs dotted around, most notably Tracy, so if you don't recognise anyone that'll be why. 
> 
> It overlaps with S1 at the end of the fic, but everything else is pre-canon, as it's set during the Rising but with flashbacks to childhood. It does hop around a _lot_ though because Jem's head is a disaster zone. (I say that with love.) I've tried to make it as clear as possible, but if you get utterly confused at any point, please leave a comment so I can fix it! 
> 
> Thanks, and I hope you enjoy! :-)

I

Before the Rising, Jem probably wouldn’t have looked twice at Lisa. Not because she wasn’t pretty (‘cos she was) but because she just about as exciting as every other permanent feature in Roarton. As in, _not_.

Lisa wasn’t the boffin that sat at the front of class, but she wasn’t the type to be smoking fags outside the sports hall either. She played flute like every other girl in school orchestra, she wore pastel colours and painted her nails, and when she was fifteen she dated some guy called Ben who was even more of a nobody than she was. Lisa was just... normal. _Boring_. Lisa was Roarton, through and through. 

-

Jem was fourteen when she realised that she thought about girls in the same way that she thought about boys. 

Her first proper kiss was with Peter Fareham two years earlier at a school disco, and she’d gone out with “Raz” (who was really called Kevin) for a couple of months when she was thirteen, but she’d never gotten close to snogging a girl before. She thought about it plenty though. She would close her eyes at night and imagine not the tobacco-tainted breath of grungy school boys, but kissing lips that tasted sweet, like bubblegum and chapstick.

There was just one problem with being bisexual though: her brother got there first. 

It was stupid because _everyone_ knew what Kieren and Rick were to each other - no teenage boys spent that much time together, alone, in a bloody cave for fuck’s sake - but no one said a damn thing about it. The only time anyone came close was when Kieren was Jem’s age and he’d made a mix CD for his “friend” Rick. Jem didn’t understand why the dinner table fell silent when he said that, but then Dad said, “Well, that’s very nice of you, Kieren,” and it was never spoken of again. It was stupid. The whole of Roarton just ignored whatever it was that they didn’t like. The Rising proved it, but Jem saw this bullshit attitude coming far before it actually happened. 

So, she was fourteen when she decided that she was going to get herself a girlfriend, but instead of sneaking around like her pussyfooted brother had done, she would bring her girlfriend home - a hot chick with a lip piercing, tattoos, and a motorbike - and snog her right in front of her parents in the living room, just to see what Dad’s answer to that would be. 

The dead came back before she could get a girlfriend though. Fucking inconvenient, that’s what that was. 

 

II

The HVF had found Lisa in the supermarket. Or, what Roarton claimed was a supermarket. Whatever. It had (some) food. Jem had been on a supply run when she found Lisa doing the same exact thing.

“Oi!” she shouted down the cereal aisle at the intruder.

Lisa dropped the box of Frosties and started waving a penknife around in a panic, like that would do anything against a rotter. 

Jem rolled her eyes and stalked towards her. “What the fuck are ya doing?” she shouted at the startled girl. “It’s illegal y’know. Looting or whatever. Ya shouldn’t even be here.”

The girl huffed and put her penknife away, stooping to pick up the Frosties. 

“Oi, lady, did you not hear me? I said get outta here-”

“Jem?” the girl interrupted. “Jem Walker?”

It stopped her in her tracks. She looked the girl up and down, and finally a name clicked into her head. “Fuck off, is it Lisa Lancaster. Shouldn’t you be off someplace playing your recorder or whatever that thing is-”

“Flute.”

Jem rolled her eyes. “Right. _Flute_ ,” she mocked. “Da fuck are you doing here?”

“Getting supplies, innit. Or didcha not hear ‘bout the apocalypse? Gotta be prepared and all.” 

Jem raised her eyebrow and cocked her hips. “Are you sassing me, Lancaster? With some shit you learnt at fuckin’ Brownies?” 

Lisa laughed. It was weird ‘cos up until that moment Jem hadn’t realised that she hadn’t heard anyone laugh since the Rising, but it sounded so weird and outta place, this girly cute giggle, that it jarred her right out.

“Didn’t think you’d remember that,” Lisa said with a half-smile. “What you doin’ anyhow? Telling me to fuck off when you’re robbing the same store. What’s that about?” 

Jem put her hands on her hips. “‘Cos _we_ ’ve got authority. Human Volunteer Force,” she said, pointing at the hastily-made patch on her arm. “Rationing out food for folk that can’t leave their home, _not_ ,” she said, plucking the Frosties from Lisa’s hands, “stealing shit for ourselves.”

“Aw, come off it,” Lisa protested, trying to wrestle the box back. “Everyone’s been takin’ stuff.”

Jem resisted her puppy dog eyes and threw the box out of reach, folding her arms and challenging Lisa with a stern glare. “Not anymore they ain’t. Oddie and Macey got a proper set-up, the only way you ain’t in trouble is if you say you’re helping us.”

Lisa bit her lip, and Jem’s mind went blank. White noise. Standing too close. Smooth skin. Curly hair. Lip gloss. 

_Fuck_.

“Yo, Jem!” came a yell from the back of the store. Gary: moment killer. “Got some rotters out front. Give us a hand will ya?!” 

Jem groaned and started backing away. “Up to you, ‘course,” she said to Lisa, “but Gary’s prolly gonna be a shitty mood after this so-” 

Lisa ended up shoving her penknife through the brain of a rotter two seconds away from taking a bite outta Gary, and Jem had never been prouder. 

 

III

Jem was the one who had woken first in the Walker household on the 20th December, the day of the Rising, and it was to the sound of screaming. 

She gasped and sat up straight in the bed. The sound of her own quick breaths was deafening as she tried to work out what woke her. She blinked until the alarm clock came into focus - 12:43 am - and she could hear the rain pelting against the window. There was a storm raging outside. Her room was cloaked in shadows and in the darkness even the coat thrown over her chair seemed sinister. She turned on her bedside light. A scream came again, muffled from the window. 

It was probably just a drunk, she thought, but then there was a screech of tyres and unrecognisable shouting… commotion she didn’t understand. Sleepily she got up and peered out of her bedroom window into the garden. 

It took a minute for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, but there was nothing to see until a shadow moved in the distant bushes, and she jumped back, letting the curtain fall closed again. 

She shivered. It was only a few days before Christmas, and the nights had gotten cold. There was more noise and now she was awake she could place it as coming from the street. She could have gone back to sleep, but she’d feel guilty if there was a car accident or something, and she doubted she could have slept through the noise anyway. Jem pulled the coat off the chair and onto her shoulders, and cautiously opened her bedroom door. 

The hallway was dark and silent. Her parents hadn’t awoken, so she didn’t want to put on the lights. Mum was always grumpy the next morning when she did that. Kieren had been a light sleeper, he would’ve been up with her, but his door had been shut for over a month now. 

She should’ve been there, she should’ve said something, helped him somehow… 

_Fuck it_. 

She tore her eyes away from his room and down towards where the streetlights bathed the living room orange at the other end of the corridor. She was two paces away from stepping into the rectangle of light when a bang pierced through the muffled din. Loud. Close. Like a fist against the garage door. She froze in fear. Her breath caught and her ears strained but the only nearby sounds were that of the wind and rain; the low hum of winter weather. It was nothing. She steeled herself and kept going. Someone might need her help. She should stop being such a wuss. 

She pulled back the living room curtain and stared. Just stared. Just like the idiot in the horror movie that you want to scream at to _just do something dammit_ , Jem just stared, and did nothing. Because it was too much. Because that hadn’t been the sound of howling wind, no, that had been the low, terrifying sound of the undead; their feet dragging, their mouths agape and moaning absently, the crack of their bones as they turned their heads.... 

There were five of them on the street. Zombies. Fucking zombies. 

Jem couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She told herself that she must have still been dreaming. Grief made your head do stupid things, right? But then, she recognised Mrs Kiley.

Mrs Kiley, her old Maths teacher, was ambling towards next door’s flowerbeds with her pink fluffy cardigan dirtied and hanging off one arm. She had died two months ago during surgery. Jem had skipped the remembrance school assembly and had felt guilty all week. But there Mrs Kiley was, just… walking. 

There was a car overturned on the pavement a few houses down, a twisted body falling out of its open door, and fire engulfing the metalwork. Shit, shit, shit, that was outside Lisa’s house, wasn’t it? Were the Lancasters alright? Oh, god. 

But, worse. There was a body. Closer. Much closer. A body lay on the verge, painting their driveway red with its blood, its open brain still dripping sludge, running down towards the garage… 

The garage. She had thought she had heard a fist on the garage door.

 _Fuck_. 

She turned her head slowly - still naively hoping that it was just a dream, that there would be nothing in their front garden at all, that this whole thing was just Kieren and Rick playing a stupid hoax and she’d wake up and Kieren would be alive, and laughing at her, because of course there was no such thing as zombies - but she turned, and lifeless eyes stared back at her through the glass window. She screamed. Red sludge dripped down from its open mouth. 

She fell away from the window and crawled back towards the sofa. Breathe. She had to breathe. 

She couldn’t speak even as her parents came rushing out of the hall and started asking questions and patted her down and Dad said something about “the racket” and she wanted to stop him, she wanted to scream for him not to look outside, but nothing came out her mouth, even as he opened the curtains, and they heard the rattle of the doorframe and the banging of fists on glass. The sound of _smashing_ glass. 

_What were they going to do? Who was going to help them?_

Jem looked up at her parents. They looked back at her, panicked. They didn’t know either. 

Jem stood up on shaky legs. They needed her to be strong. She strode into the kitchen, grabbed the biggest knife she could find and the keys to the garden shed. “Get a weapon,” she told them, and was even more shocked to find her parents following the order. 

 

IV

Eventually they realised that no one was going to come. 

“It must be a national disaster,” Dad said. “Resources must be stretched to the limit.”

“Or global...” Mum whispered with fear.

They made do. They took it in shifts to keep watch. Jem learnt to sleep with a knife under her pillow. And as much as her parents protested, every time there was a shout for help, Jem was out the door with nothing to protect her but the kitchen knife. 

After a couple of days, Jem realised that it was the same group of freaks that ran out into the fray with her: that loser Gary and his sidekick Dean; a couple of old folks like Vicar Oddie (Jem guesses out of some misguided religious loyalty); Rick’s dick of a father, Bill Macey, who just liked having an excuse to beat the living shit out of something; Tracy, her old babysitter, who must’ve been back from uni, and some others that Jem didn’t know so well. No one else from school. She tried not to think about why that was ‘cos it could be that they were all fucking dead, and that wasn’t a good thought, even if it did include Suzie Fucking McKenzie. 

The Vicar and Mr Macey were trying to make their zombie hunting official or something and set up a club. It was useless, really, but meant they had a place to stick maps on the wall and mark their patrols and encounters with the rotters. 

Gary turned up on Christmas with a large knapsack, having robbed a country store from the village over. The Vicar paused in his speech, but said nothing about stealing, in fact, he was the first to pull a shotgun out with a gleeful look on his face that made him look nearly as gormless as Dean. It was a free for all then. Jem dove in and grabbed a sheathed hunting knife, pocketed it, and was reaching for an antique gun she saw nestled at the bottom, when a hand grabbed her wrist. 

She looked up to see Gary holding her down. 

“What?” Jem snapped.

“Guns are for grown-ups,” he said with a smirk.

Jem screwed up her face, ready to give Gary the full force of her fury, when he reached into the bag with a smirk. Maybe he had been joking after all; it was the fucking apocalypse, and she needed a fucking gun. But then he passed the beautiful antique gun over her and into the hands of… Tracy. 

Jem’s mouth fell open. “Are you fucking kidding me?” 

Just because Gary wanted to fuck Tracy. Jesus. Tracy smirked and pocketed the gun. Maybe they deserved each other after all. 

-

The HVF were camping in the school sports hall one night. They’d gotten surrounded by rotters and this was one of the few school buildings that was still secure enough to defend. Gary had wanted to go back out, but after five minutes of shouting about it, Jem had convinced him that they should wait until morning and pick them off one by one. She didn’t know when people had started listening to her, but she was glad, because fuck knows she was smarter than Gary and Dean put together (though that probably wasn’t hard). 

Gary was on first watch; he was perched on a pommel horse with his gun. Jem could hear the clunk of his shoes against the wooden sides as he swung his legs. She squeezed her eyes shut and focused on the noise. She knew what that noise was. She didn’t know about the rest. The rustle, the banging, the screeching… Jem shuddered under her coat on the hard wooden floor. She should have felt safe. Gary was a good shot. He had shot a rotter over her shoulder yesterday and she had trusted him then so she should trust him now. She shouldn’t have been scared, but - 

A loud creak echoed through the hall. Jem’s eyes shot open. And met Lisa’s. The new girl. The girl they’d met at the supermarket; the girl she barely remembered from school; the daughter of the boring family that lived nearby. Jem’s heart was frantically beating in her chest. Her fear was reflected back in Lisa’s eyes. There was barely any light in the hall, only the moonlight through the toughened windows and the emergency lights on the walls, but Jem could see the twitch of Lisa’s fingers and hear the way her breath hitched. Jem could feel the space between them, over a metre, like it was tangible, like she could’ve just picked up the floor like a rope and pulled her closer, felt the heat pressed against her, held that shaking hand in hers. _Comfort_. When had she become a person that needed someone else for comfort? 

Jem broke the gaze, checked her gun was under the hoodie she was using as a pillow, and turned away. She would get used to the fear, just like she had gotten used to Kieren’s closed door, without anyone holding her goddamn hand. 

-

Jem was angry. For a long time, there was just anger, and an increasing number of black posters on her bedroom walls. Grief came to her in stages; in flashes of memory from the night Dad had found Kieren’s body, in nights spent tearing down Kieren’s artwork only to put it back up again piece-by-piece the next morning, and in the silence. She fucking hated the silence. 

Jem liked to think that she had seen Lisa at the funeral. She hadn’t, but she was in the memory anyway. Intruding her life, just like always. When Jem closed her eyes and remembered that day - the dry finger sandwiches, and the sun that hadn’t seemed to understand tradition, and the uncomfortable black dress that Mum had made her wear because Kieren had once said it had looked nice - when she was there, watching the coffin get lowered, she looked up between the heads of relatives she didn’t know the names of, and swore that she could see Lisa standing outside the church. Just watching. Just being there. 

She hated that her mind had put Lisa into the memory. Hated that where there should have been Kieren and her parents, where there should have been pain and anger and grief, there was a cute brown girl with curly hair just standing there and making it okay. Because it hadn’t been okay. It still wasn’t fucking okay. 

 

V

Jem would’ve been less pissed if Tracy could even use the fucking gun. 

Jem watched from her post as Gary crowded against her old babysitter, doing that creepy thing that boys did when they felt up a girl by pretending to help them learn. It was a sick display of dominance and misogyny that made her skin crawl, but Tracy didn’t seem to mind if her high-pitched laughter was anything to go by. To think Tracy used to play football in the back garden with her, and now she was acting like a barbie doll just so she could get laid. They really were as pathetic as each other. He stood pressed against her, pretending to help her aim, but still actually managing to miss every beer can on the bloody wall. 

That night they fucked loudly enough that Jem swore every rotter in a three mile radius heard them. Going by Tracy’s exaggerated moans, the noise was less to do with how good it was and more to do with them boasting that they were getting laid. 

Jem curled up and covered her ears with her arms, trying to block out the grunts that Gary probably thought were manly but just sounded like a wounded animal. She hated herself for it, but she felt her arousal growing. Not at Gary - she shuddered at the thought - but at the sound. She clenched her legs together like it could suppress the urge, but it couldn’t: she wanted to fuck. This could-die-at-anytime thing was really doing something for her libido. She didn’t want to die with her only sexual experience being that awkward fumbling with “Raz” where he was barely inside her before he burst his load. 

She groaned and buried her head further in her arms. She was not going to jerk off to the sound of Gary’s grunting. She was not that fucking desperate. She fell asleep with her hand stuffed between her legs and dreamt of sweet lips against her breasts. 

-

For weeks, Gary and Tracy were insufferable, shoving their tongues down each other's throats at every opportunity. Jem and Lisa took to mocking them though, sniggering and passing snide comments to each other every time Gary and Tracy took to the woods together. 

Soon though, Tracy seemed to come to her fucking senses. About a month after their first loud coupling, they started shouting more than they were fucking. Jem didn’t think she could despise anything more than their obnoxious screwing, but the shouting matches were even worse. It was the zombie apocalypse, and the last thing she wanted to do was spend it listening to them argue about cheese. For fuck’s sake, it was just Wensleydale. 

When they stopped fooling around, Tracy also stopped playing damsel in distress. Her brow furrowed in concentration during target practice, she wouldn’t whimper at every paper cut, and she stopped hiding at the back of the group every time a rotter appeared. Finally, Tracy became a useful member of the team again. Gary, meanwhile, became even more of a miserable arsehole than he was before. 

They were on another supply run when they got ambushed: her, Lisa, Tracy, and Gary. Five rotters out of nowhere and all of their weapons sheathed and unprepared. Jem pushed Lisa behind her, pulling the knife from her side as they retreated and two rotters followed them down. Gary stumbled out of view, down an aisle, hopefully to get a weapon, but probably just to run away. And there Tracy was, surrounded by the other three. 

Jem dispatched the rotter to her left while Lisa smashed the brains in of the other rotter with a hammer she’d picked up from the floor. Black sludge coated them both. She heard a couple of gunshots, but she couldn’t break away until it was too late, and she looked up from the corpse to see rotters crouched over Tracy’s prone body. 

“Get away from her, you fuckers!” she shouted after them. The rotters turned their heads towards her in interest. 

Lisa tugged on her hand insistently. “Tracy’s dead, Jem. We gotta go.” 

Jem wrenched her hand from Lisa’s and picked up her knife with determination. Tracy wouldn’t be dead if Gary hadn’t scarpered. She was going to kill the rotters, and then she was going to kill Gary. 

Jem killed one in a blind rage, but another attacked her while she was recovering, grabbing her neck from behind, and in an instinctual move she snatched the gun out of Tracy’s limp hand and pulled the trigger upwards until it was raining black sludge down on her face and the pressure around her neck had eased. She aimed the gun at the final rotter - a middle-aged woman with her hair still in curlers ambling down the aisle - when another gunshot sounded and the rotter collapsed. 

Gary stood, pale-faced, with the rifle still pointed towards Jem. He hadn’t run away after all; he’d gone back for a weapon. He lowered it slowly when the corpse between them fell to the ground. 

Jem’s line of sight shook, and she realised, belatedly, that it wasn’t the world that was shaking, but her hand, still outstretched towards Gary, holding the antique gun covered in Tracy’s blood. 

 

VI

Jem noticed she was different from other kids before she even understood what it meant. When the other girls played with their imaginary horses at break-time, she would sit in the mud and play with the worms. She just wanted to build them a network of paths so they could get out of the school playground, but no one seemed to appreciate her service. She got picked-on enough that she decided to be invisible; walk around on tip-toes like a ninja so they wouldn’t see her; wouldn’t notice. It only got worse though. The girls were replacing imaginary games with make-up and magazines and now had pictures to prove that Jem didn’t belong. They would bully her in the back-handed way that girls were so good at, “why don’t you do this, Jem,” or “I don’t know why you do that, Jem,” and later just, “you’re such a freak, Jem.” 

She didn’t know what to do. She knew her life would be easier if she could just bend to these girls, feign interest in the things they like, or call herself a “lesbian” (whatever that meant) and go play with the boys. But she didn’t really want to be friends with any of them, and she didn’t understand why she had to be. Why couldn’t they just leave her alone? 

It was Kieren that got her out of it, by making her a mix CD. He didn’t know it, but he gave her weirdness a label. Something to cling to. And though Mum called it “loud swearing nonsense,” that metal CD gave her more than any parental lecture could ever give. It gave her understanding and belonging, and even better, lyrics to scream and channel her frustration into. It was the best present Kieren ever gave her, and she wondered if Rick felt the same about his mixtape. Kieren seemed to know people better than they did.

(Although, in retrospect, that CD was not nearly as “hardcore” as Kieren had claimed.) 

-

The first time she kissed Lisa, there were tears, though Jem would never admit to anyone that they were hers. (They were). 

HVF had been patrolling the Fence when the rotters had appeared. Jem had dived through the narrow gap in wire fence so quickly that she hadn’t realised that her right arm - and her gun; Tracy’s gun, dammit - hadn’t made it until too late. 

As soon as they were safe, she had fallen to her knees in the woods and accessed the damage. Dislocated arm. It hadn’t hurt too bad when it was hanging limply from her torso, but when Gary gleefully stood behind her back and took her arm in his hands, she knew that putting it back was gonna hurt like a bitch. 

Lisa must’ve seen her silent plea and so while Gary had been behind her, re-defining the meaning of “pain”, Lisa had rushed to be in front of her, kneeling with her in the mud, talking nonsense, holding her good hand and not commenting on the tears falling down her cheeks. 

Jem had tried to focus on her warmth, her brown eyes, a curl of hair that had broken free in the scuffle, but then Gary was asking, “Ready?”, and the next thing Jem remembered after the crippling white-out flash of pain, was Lisa’s shout. 

Jem opened her eyes to see that she had squeezed her hand so tight, it had lost its colour. But, Lisa hadn’t let go. She had held on. Tears in her eyes. But still holding on. 

Jem felt her eyes widen in awe. Every past moment with Lisa was rewritten in her mind by this display of quiet bravery, casting all those moments that Jem had mistaken for fear or shyness in a new light. Looking now, as they held each other tight, Jem didn’t know how she had ever mistaken it.

Gary fucked off to “rally the troops” and Jem barely noticed. He had become more focused since Tracy died, barking orders like he was actually in charge of them. He left, and then it was just Jem and Lisa alone, kneeling behind a tree, holding hands, and staring into each others’ eyes like losers. 

It felt like a secret. Like Kieren’s cave.

Jem realised that she was crying, weeping silently and mindlessly, from the pain, or exhaustion, or fear, or… Kier. She didn’t know. 

“Shit, shit,” Jem muttered, breaking their hands apart so she could rub away the tears before anyone else could notice. She wearily scanned the woods, but the rest of their division had their backs turned some distance away. 

When Jem turned back, there were lips pressed against hers. 

And, _no_! 

No, no, no, no! That was not how that was supposed to happen. There was no motorbike, no tattoos… okay, Lisa had a gun, but it was the Rising, that didn’t make her cool. And they were hidden away, like Kieren had been… and, she couldn’t be like Kieren… Kier… Her family wasn’t here. It was all wrong. 

She cried harder and kissed fiercer, bruised Lisa’s shy lips with anger and frustration. And Lisa took it. Of course she did. 

The thought warmed her enough that she forced herself to slow down, to give Lisa the moment of sweetness that she probably deserved. And it was funny, because there was one part of her fantasy that had come true; the taste. Lisa tasted of the berry bubblegum she’d been popping earlier, and it was something straight out of her teenage fantasies. Jem cradled Lisa’s face, changed the angle to try to taste what was under the artificial flavour, but then a shout came from across the woods. 

Jem broke the kiss like she had been stung. Quickly, she glanced around the tree to see Dean calling them over. Not an attack then. Just Dean being an impatient dickbag. 

“A’right!” Jem shouted back and then turned back to see Lisa’s eyes shut and her lips pressed in a thin line, and Jem couldn’t work out what that meant. 

“You’d better not say ‘nything ‘bout this,” Jem snapped.

Lisa nodded. Her eyes were open, but averted, and Jem wanted to clarify: “The tears, don’t tell ‘em ‘bout the tears,” but she looked down at Lisa’s bowed body, and thought that actually it might be better this way.

Jem re-holstered her gun and brushed the dirt off her trousers best she could, and went to tell Gary and Dean just how stupid their plan was. 

 

VII 

Lisa must have been one of the girls at school that had taunted her before Jem learned how to smear her black eyeliner in a way that said “fuck off”, but she didn’t remember her like that. She couldn’t imagine Lisa turning her nose up at building dirt cities. Lisa might have pretended to go along with whatever the majority had wanted, but Jem knew that if she had gotten her alone and gotten her to open up the same way she had when fighting rotters, then Jem would’ve seen that secret sparkle of mischief that no one else saw and Lisa would have gotten her fingers dirty in the mud. She knew it. 

But, whatever, it hadn’t happened. In reality, Jem only had one clear memory of Lisa from school and that was from when they were ten. 

Jem was waiting outside Roarton Primary School, waiting for Kieren to come and pick her up. They always walked to school together, but now Kier was at Senior School, he finished half an hour later than she did. She liked that half hour actually. There were always a couple of other kids left behind whose parents hadn’t picked them up yet, and they’d play in the playground, or if it was raining, all huddle in the corridor that looked out onto the schoolyard. The thing was, because there were only a few of them, and they got bored, in that half hour, anyone could be friends with anyone. 

The first time it happened, it was in Year 4 and Jem had been waiting with the popular girl, Suzie McKenzie (whose dad worked in the city doing something big and important, and would sometimes get stuck in traffic) but then Jem had made the mistake of speaking to her the next morning. They had played Imagine together in the playground - “there’s a famous horse called Sparkle and she’s black and silky and she wins all the races, like this,” Suzie had said running to the treeline, and Jem had caught up and said, “but one day, she realises that she can’t win all the time,” and Suzie hadn’t argued but said, “yes! so Sparkle helps others to win,” - and the next morning, Jem had walked up to Suzie and said, “What if Sparkle had a friend?” and Suzie had just scoffed and turned away to talk to her friends like she didn’t even know what Jem was talking about.

Jem only made that mistake once. So, when she became friends with Lisa in the Half Hour, she didn’t think it was very strange at all, and she definitely didn’t think it meant anything. 

It was a Friday which was always the worse day to be waiting, and it was raining, so they were standing in the corridor, squeaking their black shoes against the wet vinyl floor. Kieren was later than usual, sometimes it was because it took him a while to tear himself away from Rick, and sometimes it was because a teacher had held him back for something. Usually for drawing on something he shouldn’t have - desks, walls, the floor - he doodled on _everything_ and it always got him in trouble. 

The best days were when Kieren was early, and happy, because Rick had walked him even though it was out of his way. Kieren would always laugh more on those days, and sometimes Jem would be sandwiched between them, holding each of their hands as they walked home, and sometimes they would let her kick her feet up and swing between them. She was too old for it, but she would do it for them, because it made them happy and made them tell her scary stories about Senior School and what it was like to be “A Grown-Up”. Every time she swung between them, she thought that it might be the last time she was allowed to. (Rick would have said that, not Kieren, he would never have told her “no”, but Rick had always gone on about “what’s right” so she knew that he would tell her one day.)

But it was late, and that meant that there was no Rick today and Kieren was probably being told off again. That meant Kieren would be in a bad mood, and then their parents would be in a bad mood, and then there would definitely be shouting and loud music tonight. Jem rested her elbows on the windowsill and then her cheeks in her palms, and watched the paths the rain made on the window. It was nearly half four now and everyone had gone home except for her, another girl in her year, and Mrs Kiley. 

“I’m bored too,” the girl said. 

Her name was Lisa Lancaster and she was boring. She was dressed in her Brownie uniform because of course she was a bloody Brownie. Her frizzy hair was pulled back into two bunches with pink hair ties. 

Jem took one look at this sad display and turned back to the window. “I’m not bored,” she said, “I’m watching the rain.”

“Oh,” Lisa said. She came to stand beside her despite not being invited to, and mirrored Jem’s pose, sulkily looking out at the downpour. “I have Brownies tonight.”

That was both obvious and uninteresting but Jem didn’t waste her energy in pointing that out. “Roarton 2nd?” she asked.

“Yeah. Mum’s meant to be picking me up. She’s not usually late. Where’s your Mum?”

Jem said nothing. 

“How come you don’t go to Brownies?” 

Jem rolled her eyes. It was something that she’d seen Kieren do before when Mum was talking (and he had gotten told off for it) but it did make her feel better. “Because Brownies are stupid.” 

“Are not.”

“Are too.” 

“We’re doing a Scavenger Hunt today,” Lisa boasted.

“Sounds boring,” Jem said. It didn’t, actually, it sounded awesome. Dad had once set up an Easter Egg hunt for her and Kieren and she had won by miles. Kieren was really bad at finding things that were right in front of him. He would have made a rubbish spy. 

“There are clues on each of the cards and it leads you to the next one, and whoever solves the last card first, wins.”

Jem turned to stare at Lisa. “So there’s no chocolate?”

“I don’t know,” Lisa admitted. “I haven’t done one before.”

Jem just stared, because this girl seemed really stupid. “So how do you know how it works?”

Lisa shrugged. “They told us about it last week.”

“And you believe them?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“They’re adults,” Jem said. “Adults lie. What if the questions are about maths or something?”

Lisa frowned. “They won’t be. It will be fun,” she said, but this time she didn’t sound convinced. 

“It sounds stupid.”

Lisa’s Mum arrived then and whisked her away, and then Kieren showed up with a frown to rival the valley and marched her home. 

On Monday morning, Jem saw Lisa taking her books out of her bag and saw the glint of chocolate coins at the bottom of it. She wanted to ask about the Scavenger Hunt, to find out if this naive girl somehow managed to win. She wanted to, but she couldn’t. It was the rules of the Half Hour. So she walked right past and sat at the back of the class and ignored the look that Lisa sent her way. 

 

VIII

The first time they fucked it was with rotter blood still on their faces; with thick black sludge on their fingers and sticking in their hair. 

They had been ambushed by a fresh group of rotters that came in from the west. In the chaos, their HVF division had scattered. Jem had wanted to go home, desperately, and have a hot bath, but Lisa was lying in the dirt with her sprained ankle caught in a root and her gun out of reach, and Jem knew that she wouldn’t make it out by herself, yet alone make it all the way home. They had fought off the approaching rotters and then Jem had looped her arm around Lisa’s waist and practically dragged her to safety. 

They had managed to lock themselves in a car garage without being followed. When they’d gotten some fucking sleep, they’d go back out there and regroup, but for now, this was as safe a place as any. 

Lisa’s breathing was heavy and pained, her hand rested against her ankle as if that would somehow help. “Thank you,” she said between gasps.

Jem shrugged and pressed her ear against the closed metal door, listening for any movement outside. Silence. “Wasn’t gonna let you die now, was I?” 

(Not another person, no way.)

Lisa said nothing, but when Jem slumped down beside her friend, their backs against the concrete wall between a broken bike and a stack of unmarked boxes, there was a gentle hand brushing her cheek. 

Jem jolted at the sudden touch; at the unexpected tingle that coursed through her. She pulled away, Lisa’s hand dropping to her side. Jem didn’t need comforting or whatever the fuck that was.

But Lisa didn’t back away. Instead, with that quiet bravery that Jem had begrudgingly come to appreciate, she placed her lips softly against Jem’s turned neck - against a scant inch of skin not covered in grime - and Jem felt it everywhere. 

A hotwire to her system. 

Jem was never any good at being patient anyway. 

Their lips bruised more than they kissed, their hands claimed, their clothes were further torn from their bodies. Black blood stained Lisa’s white panties as Jem’s fingers dove under open jeans to rub the best she could against Lisa’s clit. It worked. Lisa gasped, and her hands came up to drop mud and dried blood into Jem’s bra as she cupped her breast. It was dirty. It was messy. And it was fucking perfect. 

 

IX

She used to go camping with Kieren, just in the back garden, mind, but it felt like an adventure, like everything did when you were eight years old and allowed to play in the dirt. Kieren was useless at putting up the tent, but because he was a boy, it was somehow expected that he should do it. She took the pegs out of his hands, and nailed the fabric into the soil herself. 

They would sit cross-legged, by the light of torches and the sound of crinkling crisp packets, and tell each other scary stories until past their bedtime. 

Kieren was telling her a scary story, with the torch tilted underneath his chin so his face was half in shadow and his eyes flared like stars. “The clock struck midnight,” Kieren told her in an awed whisper, “and his hand pushed through the soil of his grave, clawing his way out-” his eyes bulged and his fingers splayed crooked, imitating those of the dead man in the story. He tilted his head to the side with a crack, made his eyes and mouth lifeless, and in a broken voice he whispered, “desperate for _revenge_.” 

Jem shrieked as Kieren tackled her with the last word. The torch fell from his grip and cast uncontrolled shadows as they squirmed against the ground. His teeth bumped against her skull like he was pretending to eat her brains. Her shrieks of shock turned into peals of laughter as his fingers dug into her side, tickling her until she cried for mercy. 

He relented, eventually, and lay beside her in the tent, still chuckling as Jem fought for breath. 

“Kier,” she asked when she could breathe again, “why do zombies eat brains?” She picked up the fallen torch and turned the beam of light towards him, until his face was fully illuminated like the moon. 

He laughed and then pushed the light away from his face with a groan. He never liked being the centre of attention. “I don’t know, Jem, why do little girls insist on asking stupid questions?” 

She kicked him then just to prove a point, “I’m not a little girl!”

“Ow, ow!” he cried, cradling his shin to his chest. “That hurt!”

“Don’t be such a baby,” she told him, giving him a nudge. Gentler, this time though. Just in case he wasn’t kidding. “Why?” she asked again. 

“Because,” Kieren said with a sigh. 

“You don’t know, do you?” she accused. 

“Of course I know,” he defended, sticking out his tongue at her. But then she saw the glint in his eye that meant a story was coming. He was always good at making up stories. 

She sidled up closer to him in an invitation. “Go on, Kier, pleeeeeease.” 

“Okay, but you can’t tell mum and dad that I told you this okay? Do you promise?” 

Jem pouted, but relented anyway, “I promise.”

Kieren huddled down in the blankets and scooted as close as possible to her, like it was a secret only between them. “Because the brain is what makes you who you are,” he said, his finger tapping at her temple. “Memories and stuff. It’s your soul in there, so when you die, you don’t know who you are anymore. That’s why zombies eat brains, because they’re trying to find themselves again.” 

-

Jem woke up with a scream caught in her throat. 

The illusions took less time to clear than they used to, but it still took a moment to get her bearings. The first time she had seen Kieren’s face above her, all rotting away and tearing at her flesh, she thought it was real; she had lashed out with her knife and sprinted to the other end of the house. She knew better now. No one but Lisa even knew she still had night terrors. 

They were in the pub tonight. It was attacked by rotters in the early evening, and after they had dumped the bodies, and boarded the place up again, they’d thought they may as well stay for a pint. The pint turned into several. 

Her neck ached from having been slumped over the table and her head throbbed from the alcohol. 

Cautiously, she looked around, in case anyone had witnessed her terror, but Dean was the only one awake, and he was still looking out the window, on watch. His eyes drooped shut as she watched. 

She waited until her breathing had calmed and then she wiped away the cold sweat and approached him. It didn’t take much convincing to have him trade places, and then she was the one circling the pub and checking the windows, and his loud snoring that kept her awake. 

Nearly every night she dreamt of Kieren. It was always worse if they’d killed that day. If it had been by her hand. She would relive the fight, but at the last minute, their faces would turn to Kieren’s. 

She rubbed her hand over her tired eyes and perched on a table with a good view, her gun lying beside her. It was her gun now. Gary didn’t try to claim it back, and she was so angry with him that day, that he probably would’ve got a bullet to his groin if he’d tried. But the gun felt heavier than it was that Christmas day when she’d first found it. Weighted. 

Jem hadn’t really realised where she was sitting until a hand curled around hers. She didn’t even jump at the touch. Somewhere between the corpses and the running and the crawling home caked in mud, Lisa’s touch had verged into normal territory. 

Lisa blinked up at her sleepily from her seat. “Did you dream about him again?” 

Jem pulled her hand out from under Lisa’s and checked her gun for bullets. “They’re not dreams,” she snapped, clicking the gun back together a little forcefully. Her eyes flickered to Lisa’s open expression and then back out through the cracks in the window. “But, yeah,” she admitted. 

Jem knew enough about herself to know that being a dick was just a protective instinct, but Lisa didn’t deserve it. No one else here asked about Kieren. No one else cared. But Jem still refused to open up completely just because a pretty girl took interest. That was how you got yourself killed. She knew Lisa wanted to be girlfriends or whatever, and maybe if it wasn’t the fucking apocalypse, Jem might have thought ‘bout it. But she saw how fucked up Gary had become since Tracy died and he didn’t even love her. The thought of what would happen if she let herself be with Lisa… 

Whatever. They fooled around sometimes, but that was all. 

Lisa stretched and moved to sit on the table beside Jem, leaning against her shoulder and swinging her legs under the table like a sleepy but excited toddler. Jem ought to push her away, but there was something comforting about a warm body pressed against hers. She blamed it on the night terror. 

“Why ‘aven’t we seen Kier?” Jem whispered, so quiet because she didn’t even want to hear herself. “We shoulda seen ‘im by now.” 

Lisa shrugged, and the movement brushed her whole side, warming it. “I dunno, but I’ve been thinking… maybe ‘cos it had to be a natural death? Like, I know it was recent so he should be walking, but maybe ‘cos of the way he died…”

Jem closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “‘Cos it was suicide?” she said bitterly. “I don’t think it works like that, Lise.”

She shrugged again, the very movement comforting her. “I don’t think we know anything about how it works. Why can’t it be like that?”

She allowed herself to believe it for a moment, to buy into Lisa’s constant optimism, but when they cordoned off the graveyard last month, she saw it alright. “‘Cos I’ve seen his grave.”

“Maybe some kids were just fooling around, disturbed it, y’know…” 

Jem shook her head. “Stop,” she said softly. “Stop trying to make it better. He’s a rotter, Lise, I just dunno where he is. Maybe hiding away in that fucking cave of his. Or dead already. Someone could’ve put a pitchfork through his head that first night and we wouldn’t know.” 

Lisa reached for her hand, but Jem had just enough energy left in her to pull away. She wanted the support, she did, but if Gary knew they were fucking, he wouldn’t let up. She had spent enough nights alone, thinking about Kieren chewing on an old school teacher’s brains, that she could survive another without Lisa holding her goddamn hand. 

“If we do find him…” Lisa said hesitantly as Jem stood up, “what are you going to do?”

Jem holstered her gun. “Like any rotter, put a bullet through its fucking skull.” 

 

X

Rick used to have really cool games for the playstation. Jem was only thirteen or something when he got it for his birthday, so it must’ve been first or second gen, but she remembered there was this good first-person shooter game she’d liked. 

They used to wait until Rick’s dad was out and then Kieren would sneak them across to Rick’s bedroom and take turns playing the games. Mostly, she watched. She complained and complained but she actually learnt a lot from watching. By the time Rick handed her a controller, she knew all the best places to hide and would stand there, her finger hovering over the button that would set off the mines as soon as someone approached. 

As time went on, Kieren and Rick would disappear more and more often and leave her playing in his room. She got good. Aiming became second nature. See something, turn, shoot. No questions asked. 

-

A gunshot sounded through the night. 

Jem startled. The newspaper she was reading fell into her crossed legs. 

It was nothing. She knew it was nothing. It sounded far away. The HVF in another part of town, probably. But still her back was jarred straight against the bedframe. 

She was on the floor, leaning back against her own bed, reading the shitty local paper. It was months after the Rising, and the media were piecing themselves back together and trying to tell a cohesive story. The local paper she had in her hands was more like an obituary than anything else. Vicar Oddie was working with the papers in an attempt to keep track of the Rotters they’d dispatched and the victims that they took with them. There were sometimes other bits of news, about HVF divisions and rumours about cures. She didn’t read the paper for that though. Every time a paper found its way into her hands, she’d be scanning the pages looking for a single name. 

“‘nything?” a voice whispered from the bed.

Lisa. The gunshot woke her. Of course it did. They were trained to respond to the sound. 

“No,” she told her, and folded the newspaper into quarters. 

It was strange being in her room. Jem spent so much time on the move lately with HVF that she had barely been home. The number of Rotter sightings had decreased though, and so she was allowed the occasional night off. Lisa was here because they were researching, in theory, before Lisa had commandeered the bed.

Jem stretched as she stood up, cracking her back that ached from the uncomfortable position on the floor. Lisa was watching her, unashamedly, as her t-shirt rose to reveal a line of her stomach. Jem felt a blush creep up her cheeks but she laughed it off and threw a pillow at Lisa instead. “Perv.” 

Lisa laughed and caught it. “Come ‘ere,” she said, with a sly smile. 

Jem saw her, stretched out on the same sheets where she had wanked off to visions of girls with lip piercings on motorbikes, and noticed how innocent Lisa looked even now; this girl with smooth brown skin and tightly curly hair that Jem had twisted round her fingers and _pulled_ the first time they fucked on the floor of that garage. Lisa had beaten a rotter’s brains out with a hammer, but when she smiled at Jem it was like she was still that little Brownie excited about a scavenger hunt. Even back then Jem had been breaking Lisa’s innocence, crushing her little naive optimism and blind belief, when she told her not to trust the adults. They’d _trick_ you, Jem had said.

But, Jem realised, Lisa never actually broke. 

Jem’s been pushing and pushing at Lisa, tearing her apart with her night terrors and her violence and her refusal to have this be more than sexual release, but Lisa was strong enough to take all that; take it all, and process it, and have it come out as understanding. The strength she had hidden underneath was sexier than any outward display of tattoos and leather could ever be.

“Okay,” Jem said as she walked towards her, a smirk on her face. “I’ll come to bed.” 

Lisa grabbed her t-shirt and pulled her down with a grin. 

“Oh, that how it’s gonna be?” Jem asked, and didn’t even wait for an answer before grabbing Lisa’s hands and pinning them to the bed. She leaned down to whisper in her ear, “You’re gonna regret that, Lancaster.” 

Jem made her come three times in quick succession - the last one wrenched from her body with an exhausted sob - before letting her go. 

Lisa sagged against her afterwards, a pleasant weight over her side, and left cautious little kisses against her skin, like Jem would tell her to stop at any moment. She didn’t. She let Lisa kiss her sweetly over and over again and threaded her hands through her hair kindly this time when Lisa moved between her legs and took her clit between her lips. Jem sighed in pleasure, not in boredom like she thought she might when someone touched her so gently like this, and maybe it was just her exhaustion, but she fell into it until she was gasping dreamily into the pillow. 

This was much more than they’d allowed themselves. This wasn’t fucking, it wasn’t the need for release after battle, this was Lisa _making love to her_ like a fucking virgin. She should have been angry. But every kiss and caress and breath was so Lisa Lancaster that she couldn’t help but find it hot. Lisa had done so much for her, and if all she wanted in return was to make Jem’s knees as weak as a Victorian heroine once in awhile, then it seemed like a fair deal. 

It was so drawn out that even her orgasm felt long. Her mind was still buzzing and her limbs exhausted when Lisa lay beside her again. She wanted to tell Lisa that it was amazing, that she made her re-evaluate every part of her life, that she didn’t know she could feel that safe again, not since… but she fell asleep before she could even kiss her goodnight. 

-

Mum and Dad weren’t the touchy-feely type. What British parents were though? When Jem had nightmares as a kid, she wouldn’t come crying to mum and dad, no, she would crawl under the covers with Kieren. He’d just tell her to stop squirming - “lie still, would you, I’ve got school tomorrow” - but he never once kicked her out. 

He never got funny about holding her hand or giving her hugs, and as they grew up they were still tactile with each other even when he had Rick and she had eyeliner and loud music. Not in public so much, because they were teenagers for fuck’s sake, but they’d slouch together when watching movies, and say goodnight with a kiss on the cheek, and when he was a real dick, he’d tickle her even though she was now big enough to kick him back.

She got so used to his touch, that when he died, it felt like her skin had been torn away. She curled up on her bedsheets, layers upon layers piled on top, but she still felt cold. It felt like her curved spine was raw. Exposed. The cold began to sink in, until ice grew over the wound, and as the months passed, she forgot that it used to be made of anything else. 

-

Jem finally let herself thaw. There were still wounds left by Kieren’s death that cut deep, but the skin at least had healed; had warmed. She let Lisa touch her in soft and loving ways, and in return, on Jem’s bad days - after night terrors, or after a rotter looked too much like Kier - Lisa allowed for Jem’s anger to dictate their behaviour. There were compromises, and a steady building of trust, until they had formed what someone might optimistically call a relationship. 

A’right, so they were still a mess, but in battle they were perfect. With Tracy’s gun, and Lisa at her back, Jem felt like she had in that video game; she knew all the rules, she had all she needed, and she could just aim, shoot, and kill. Instinctively. 

 

XI

Rotter activity had gotten quieter. Normal life was beginning to resume. The HVF members slept in their own homes. Most of their energy was now spent building the fence than killing any actual rotters. Rumours came in that the government had found a cure.

“About bloody time,” Mum had said. 

Jem was worried school might start soon. She felt too old now, too aged by slaughter and sleepless nights, to be able to study again. 

Lisa was excited though. “Hey, maybe maths without Mrs Kiley won’t be so bad-”

Jem snorted and nudged her as they grabbed a trolley. She still remembered zombified Mrs Kiley on her driveway, though it felt as if the memory was decades old, not less than a year ago. This was how it was now; death had become a joke, a normality. 

They were going shopping. Or stealing. Same odds. The store might reopen properly at some point, but for now they could still use HVF as an excuse to grab some snacks without paying a single penny. The problem was that the store only had the shit stuff left. 

They split up so Jem could raid the frozen stuff while Lisa claimed whatever was left in the snack aisle. Why Gary couldn’t go on the crappy supply run instead of them, she didn’t know. He always gave them the shit jobs, like he was jealous or bitter or just plain misogynistic. At least this time she could make sure that no fucking Wensleydale came back with them. 

Jem was standing on tiptoes to raid the top of the freezer cabinet when she realised what would make the perfect fence-building snack. She jumped down and radioed for Lisa to get some biscuits. 

“Thought you were on a diet, mate?” came the teasing reply. 

She really wasn’t. But supplies were low one day and Lisa was hungry so she made up the lie so Lisa would bloody well eat something. Now she had the cheek to use it against her. 

Jem forgave her moments afterwards when she radioed back to say she got the shortbread. The caramel ones were Kier’s favourite, but they’d make do making their own. She grinned and jumped up to pull the ice-cream from the back of the freezer. Strawberries and cream. Lisa liked that flavour. 

A gunshot. Then another.

Jem dropped the ice-cream and ran.

She saw several blurs from the corner of her eye as she ran but she was focused so hard on getting back to Lisa that she barely paid them any mind until she was only an aisle or two away. 

She took out a couple of rotters in her way and moved down to the next aisle, calling out Lisa’s name desperately. _Please be okay, please be okay…_ The supermarket was now crawling with rotters. The panic grew. Her grip on the gun tightened. She called for Lisa again. 

She turned, and there he was. 

_Kieren_.

She lowered her gun before she had even recognised the action. He was a rotter, she should shoot, she should shoot… 

But he stared back. Like he knew her.

He was a _rotter_. 

Aim, shoot, and kill. 

With shaking hands, she raised the gun again. 

And then she saw the body he was crouched over, and she felt the world spin.

 _Lisa_.

-

It was a blur after that. Not just the supermarket. Her life. It was all one big fucking blur. 

Lisa’s picture got put up in a black frame on the wall with the rest of the HVF: missing, presumed dead. 

Jem couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t shoot her own brother.

Every night she would revisit the supermarket in her dreams. She relived it over, and over, again. Kier. His face. His chin bloody. His hands covered in brains. _Her_ brains. The gun that shook in Jem’s hands. Her brother the target. The person she had missed the most killing the person that had saved her from the grief. Irony didn’t cover it. 

Now, she walked around Roarton with no warmth at all. She had lost everything. Felt nothing. She may as well have been a rotter for all that she cared about life. She put Tracy’s gun to her head more times than she could count, but she never pulled the trigger. She didn’t want her parents to have lost both children to suicide. So instead, she walked around lifeless carrying the hollow ache of guilt. 

The guilt was eating her alive. She could have saved Lisa. If she got there quicker, if she actually pulled the trigger, she could have stopped it. But would she have? 

No.

Kieren had died once and she had barely survived. Even in her mind, she didn’t have the strength to kill him again. 

She had walked out of that supermarket that day, crying hysterically with grief, until she became so heavy with the burden that she hurled all over the car park. She was sicker than she had ever been in her life, it kept coming and coming, and afterwards, she realised that she no longer felt a damn thing. It was if she’d puked up every feeling she had left. She turned her back and left them laying putrid and curdling on the dirty cement. 

Since then, she’d followed Gary’s idiotic orders without answering back. She stood silent in every tactical meeting of HVF. It felt as if she had built the fence around Roarton entirely alone to match the one erected around her heart. And when a rotter came into sight, no one saw the slight shake of her hands before she pulled the trigger. 

She had gone back to the supermarket, when the numbness had taken hold. She knew they would need a body for the funeral. But, Lisa’s body was gone. Jem retraced her steps, looked again. Looked down every aisle in the store. The blood was there, but not the body. It made no sense. Did they take her? Did they turn her into one of them?

She wouldn’t let herself believe. She pushed down her panic and fell into the safety of numbness once more. Selfishly, she told herself she was only grateful that she didn’t have to see the remains. Seeing Lisa’s vacant eyes and pale lips and curly hair - once pulled viciously in fucking, tied in bunches with pink bows, lovingly twirled around Jem’s finger that lazy morning in bed - seeing _that_ might have broken her completely.

-

She hoped that Kieren got away. She had to believe that the authorities would find him. Cure him. Then could do that now, right? 

But then, she wondered, would he come home? Would he remember what he did? Would she be able to look him in his white eyes knowing that he had killed her lover? 

One evening she got close to telling Mum and Dad. They were watching TV, some repeat documentary, and she opened up her mouth to tell them: “I saw Kieren.” But she couldn’t do it. She knew the burden that the knowledge brought, and she couldn’t do it to them. Kieren was dead. They buried him. They didn’t need to know what he did after that. 

-

Lisa’s memorial was held at the same pub where they had shared a dozen memories.

Grief was layered thick over her. First Kieren, then Tracy, then Lisa. She looked ‘round the grievers and wondered who was next. Her parents? Gary? Fuck. Like she’d ever care about Gary. But there wasn’t much else they could take from her.

Lisa’s parents made a toast, and called Jem a hero. They didn’t know that she had let the rotters go free. She had told everyone that she had run out of bullets. She was a liar, and a coward, and she just wished Kier was here so she could have confided in him. 

She downed her glass of cheap vodka and went into the back room. She took down Lisa’s black-framed photograph, and stroked the edge of the frame. She could have said a hundred sappy things; things she never had the chance to say, like _I love you_ , and _I’m sorry, god, I’m so sorry,_ but she didn’t. She sat there in silence until her dad silently wrapped her coat around her shoulders and walked her home. 

 

XII

When they get the call that Kieren’s at a treatment centre, Jem notices how everyone carefully avoids the word “alive”. ‘Cos he’s not alive. They can dress it up all they like, but he’s still a fucking zombie at the end of the day. 

She can’t do it, she realises; she couldn’t shoot him, but she also can’t pretend that nothing happened. He killed people, he _ate_ people, and they’re meant to just forgive and forget? It’s bullshit. 

He killed _Lisa_ , and with each passing day, each lonelier than the last, she had begun to wonder if she should have put a bullet in his fucking skull after all. 

She can’t even look at him at first. Dead, but not dead. 

He says he doesn’t remember what he did, but sometimes when she wakes twisted in the covers and reaching for her gun, she hears him too, enduring a nightmare across the hall behind the closed door that is no longer always closed. 

Sometimes, it’s him. It’s Kieren. She’ll walk in on him sketching, or they’ll go walking through the countryside, and when he’s caked in the make up, she can almost forget the last couple of years ever happened. _She has her brother back_. It’s all that she’s ever wanted. 

But then, she’ll see his true face. Remember it dripping with blood. Remember the countless other faces she saw and put down like rabid animals. 

The scariest moments of all, are when she sees both at the same time: the brother she loves, and the rotter that ate her girlfriend. 

-

Kieren has both faces, when they finally talk about Lisa. 

Jem’s having a nightmare, and then it turns into reality; she’s sat straight up, her gun pointed at a rotter’s face. _Kieren_ ’s face.

“You were there,” Kieren says. 

And she doesn’t have to ask where. They mirror the positions they had on that day. 

“You were there when Lisa was killed.”

“When you killed her,” Jem corrects, her voice like gravel from little sleep and too much suppressed anger. The gun is shaking in her hands again. She’s so frustrated. She’s so angry. But she’s not going to fucking _cry_. “Come to talk your way out of it? To make excuses?” she says, the gun still pointed at his face. 

She manages to stay mad, she does, until he says, all quiet and broken, “It feels awful.” 

She lowers the gun. He would have done anything to stop it, he tells her, to stop killing Lisa. 

“So you think I’m a coward?” she spits. Because she’s thought it, fuck knows, she’s thought it. Who else sees a rotter and doesn’t shoot? 

But Kieren looks insulted by the idea as he sits by her on the bed. “No.” 

He lets her shout and cry, until she looks him in the eye, the first since his return and she admits, “I couldn’t do it.” She couldn’t shoot her brother. 

“I’m glad you didn’t, Jem.” 

-

When they walk to the Lancaster’s house, the tears are clogging in her throat, and she wants to tell him: _she wasn’t just my mate, Kier, she kept me alive,_ but the words get stuck with the tears. She tries to talk to him about Rick and wonders if it’s the same feeling that’s keeping him silent. The feeling that if you talk about it, you make it real. 

-

She sits beside Kieren as he tells the Lancaster’s what happened to their daughter, puts her hand on his arm when it looks like he’s not going to make it. It took guts to come here, for both of them, but for Kieren especially, to come out and confess murder. She’s… proud of him. Her badassery has been a facade for so long, definitely since Lisa’s death, that she forgot just how awesome the Walkers can be. 

It’s a really fucked up situation, and then Lisa’s parents go and act like fucking idiots on top of it. They’re bonkers, but they also make a fucking good point: _who moved her body?_

Jem suddenly wants to believe. To believe as much as her parents do. As much as Lisa used to do. 

Jem never used to understand why Lisa always willfully chose to believe in the best outcome, but, suddenly Jem gets it: sometimes you have to believe in something, however unlikely it is, simply because you can’t stand to believe the opposite. 

They never found Lisa’s body. So why can’t she be alive? Why can’t that be true?

She leaves the Lancasters’ house feeling both lighter and fuller than she has since that day in the supermarket. 

-

Then, things get even more fucked up than before. Rick dies, Kieren nearly dies, they see Dad cry, and that’s the worst of all. 

And then, later, Jem crawls into Kieren’s bed, and they just lie awake together. Close like those nights spent camping. Silent like those walks home from school in the rain. 

She has her brother back, and gradually, the world begins to warm again.

 

XIII

Time passes, and life changes. Jem goes through boyfriends and girlfriends and school and college and then decides to leave Roarton behind. 

She gets the train to visit Kieren on the coast, and watches as the trees blur past the window. 

_We were hoping for more than that. Like maybe you’d spotted her. In the woods._

The Lancaster’s words still haunt her. The brown of the bark blurs into the brown of her skin, just for a minute, and Jem can almost believe it. Maybe Lisa is playing a Scavenger Hunt, wandering the forests in search of a prize. 

Jem smiles at her reflection, obscured by the rain on the glass, and lets herself believe. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If tumblr's your thing, [this is me](http://vands88.tumblr.com/).


End file.
